ChrisTurk

Manhattan is a big shopping mall. You can buy anything if you know the right place. Fortunately most of it doesn't feel super commercial so I can deal with it. While you're on Canal (undoubtedly shopping) if you get as far over as Broadway avoid the far too common Starbucks and stop by the Lafayette coffee shop, which is just a little ways up, surprise, Lafayette st.

What happened to the sex shops, porn theaters, and drug dealers? Times Square used to be one of the seediest places in the US if not the world. It used to be Disneyland for adults, now it's just Disneyised and made tame. But nobody seems to notice because they've gotten used to the place's new aura. Doesn't mean it's a bad place, just not what it used to be famous for.

If you're ever up around w 125th and Amsterdam, stop by Golden Krust. The jerk chicken is pretty good, but the coconut bread is to die for. Hooray for Harlem. Just the name of the place and the history associated with it (and the name's reputation) makes it seem more exciting, but it really isn't all that big of a deal.

And that's not a good thing. Somehow the place is just too self-aware, too TV-hip to be that interesting a place to hangout. If you want to play tourist and see where your favorite shows are filmed, fine, but I'm not interested in watching you gawk so I'll be somewhere else.

I was trying to get to the Hourglass on w 46th, but misread the sign and turned down w 47th by accident. I don't care about diamonds, I'm not interested in diamonds, but it seems all they had were diamonds and more diamonds (and one very flamboyant boutique, if you know what I mean). And after seeing this street, I could do without diamond shops for a while.

It isn't. I heard about "Madison Ave advertising agencies" and I thought the place would be full of advertising people the way Wall St has a wall. I was very very wrong.

One block over from Park Pl. (Heh, like in Monopoly), it has some of the snazziest shops imaginable. My god, though, some of them are expensive.

So you know it's full of college students. It depends on your perspective whether that's a good or bad thing. When I went, I liked it. It does have a lot of decent places to eat nearby (Cuba is one block over on Thompson), but I was there for the NYU Business and Law bookstore. Meh, it has books. I thought it was the site of the Poe house NYU demolished, but it wasn't. That's on w 3rd.

Oh, and skip the Duane Reade just up Becker. It's a mess and service is terrible..

I gotta say, when I first saw it I thought Grand Central station on a Monday morning may well be the busiest place on earth. That was until I reached the street. Carrying luggage through that was simply impossible so I decided to stop at one of the trillion or so little eat places right there (I don't remember which now, it may have been Oren's as I do remember pastries) to wait it out.

To get around the mess where the World Trade Center used to be (which is STILL a great gaping hole) I had to go up West to Murray, Murray over to Greenwich, down Greenwich to Park, Park over to Broadway, Broadway down to Fulton, Fulton over to Church, and Church up to Vessey. If I'd known it'd be such an ordeal, I would have walked or found an alternate route. I hate driving on one way streets.

I didn't have to take care of anything but I stayed in an apartment overlooking the park for a month. Basically rented a friend's place for the month. Cost me all of $600 because that's what she was subletting the place for. Hooray for rent-control wonkiness. I gotta say it was the first time I'd ever spent a lot of time in a place I didn't need my car. And I was certainly disturbed that I got mugged for the first time in my life in a city where I couldn't carry my gun. It certainly was an experience.

Go here for no other reason than Katz's Deli. Really. In spite of everything else in the area it's my favorite. Be sure to ask one of the owners about the rumors that they're about to sell out to a developer or move the store or retire to Tahiti. Savor the pained look on their faces. And the cheesecake is spectacular. Did I mention they deliver nation wide?

There really isn't much here. I mean there's gas stations and convenience stores and whatnot with the usual generic trappings of suburbia, but that's about it. There's nothing particularly special about it apart from the deceptive name. Driving past I was certain it would take me to the Pacific, but it didn't. It didn't really go anywhere, it was just a place.

Dolores itself seemed pretty tame (and some friends live there), but it was close (within walking distance) to several of the restaurants friends had recommended. La Provence was a quarter mile over on Guerrero St. Quite tasty. And the delightful Tao Cafe was just about across the street from La Provence. We never did get to go to Liberties, but it was right there.

The switchbacks are all downhill (it'd be much more fun to watch some kid learn to drive a manual transmission up the street rather than down it) and it seems to always be packed with traffic. The flowers are entirely transitory as well -- in fact they were dead and brown when I saw the street. And yet... and yet it's one of San Fran's most memorable streets. So memorable that I almost forgot about it entirely.

No, really, I did. Early evening, right in front of the pizza shop. A crowd gathered and watched as the cop patted down the hooker and the hooker (he? she?) talked smack about the cop, his mother, and the things the three of them did together the night before. Quiet a show. That's all the memory I have of the street and I doubt it's an hourly show, but I bet some creative buskers could recreate it for tourists. Not that I'm certain it was real. Fun for all ages, though.

One of the other reviewers mentioned the Hilton San Francisco, and I just want to back up what he/she said. It really is a nice place to stay, and the courtyard is a great place to relax and swim and lounge in the sun (in the summer, at least, the rest of the year is just too chilly for proper sunbathing in SF) while you plan the rest of your day.

It's one of those streets that makes me wonder whether San Francisco isn't just a party and food town with a few residential bits thrown in to make sure there are people to do the partying and eating. Great food and nightlife, as it should be considering they named a region of the city after this street.

I'm half disappointed half impressed that they've turned the place from "be a hippie" into "buy a hippie," but I shouldn't have . I'd say skip it and head down to fisherman's wharf. Better food down there and fewer college students pretending to be hippies. Stop by Golden Gate Park instead, or head to fisherman's wharf, which is only maybe 4 miles north of here.

Best for retirees having acid flashbacks, I think.

..and there's traffic. My god, is there traffic. I'm almost tempted to use the old Yogi Berra-ism "nobody goes there anymore, it's too crowded," but clearly everybody does go there. And it's worth braving the traffic, too, if for nothing other than the food.

Keep the kids and grandparents on a short leash, lest they get hit by a passing streetcar.

It's like everything all at once all the time. I wouldn't have expected San Francisco to have a place so much like New York City, but yet so different. Somehow it's just more fun, less somber, than NYC, and the great swaths of astonishing restaurants and hotels and shops make it a great spot for tourists, if not so much for seasoned travelers.